Posts tagged “Apple Day”

The end of Summer 2012 has been a rather unusual one for me in that it involved a high number of outings. Especially weekend outings. I actually missed some Fools Play to do some of these. Here, very briefly, are all that I can remember:

Portland, about which I wrote extensively already.

“Mystery Day Trip,” about which I am going to write extensively soon (stay tuned).

Camping: Yes, I went camping. We went to Millersylvania State Park, which is just South of Olympia. We went there in large part so that I could sneak away Saturday night and perform Fools Play, then sneak back afterwards and continue the camping. I really enjoy the “sitting around the campfire” and “hanging out with 8 or 9 friends all day” parts of camping. Including some rather amusing obstacle-riddled croquet. I don’t so much enjoy the “sleeping in a tent” part of camping.

Marrow: For our 8th wedding anniverserary, Carrie & I went back to Marrow for the first time this year. They were offering a special three-course menu, so we opted for that and also threw in a couple extra courses. Here’s all what we had:

1. Wild mushroom and sorrel salad. Very tasty.
2. Salmon belly tartare covered with fish roe on an amazing dill cream cheese sauce, and served with crispy wonton shaped like a cornucopia, out of which the chunks of raw salmon were pouring. The play of all the textures was outstanding, and the flavors all really went well together.
3. Chicken fried sweetbreads, which were like smooth and buttery chicken nuggets.
4. Oxtail, which is rapidly becoming one of my favorite meats, especially the ways they prepare it at Marrow.
5. A boiling hot pear & gorgonzola tart. The pungent/sweet/salty combination worked really well, once the thing cooled down enough to actually touch it.

Marrow is good.

Birthdays: My sister and her stepdaughter both had birthdays within about a month of each other.

Apple Day: Carrie & I returned to the childhood home of Marvel’s X-men’s female clone of Wolverine (X-23) for our 6th annual Apple Day, wherein we crushed apples into fresh apple cider with the help of an apple press, and had a potluck dinner wherein we ate too much delicious food.

Cabin & Leavenworth: Carrie & I (& Suki) once again rented our favorite cabin up on the Skykomish river and introduced her parents to it. After we checked out we continued over the mountain to hang out in Leavenworth for a while. It was kinda hazy because of all the wildfires on that side of the mountain, and indeed we had to go back up and through Highway 2 to get home because the normal way we would have gotten home (down Highway 97 to Cle Elum then back via I-90) was so smoky that it was not a viable alternative.

Pancake Party: Just yesterday we went to an almost-all-day Pancake Party at the Skylark. More on that soon as well…

Um, I think that’s about it. There were also various trips to Pint Defiance and one to the Parkway Tavern. This post was meant more to help me remember everything than it was meant to be entertaining.

Yesterday (Saturday) Carrie & I went and picked up Laura and her roommate Caitlin, and then drove over to Laura’s folks’ house in Shelton. Why? To make fresh apple cider, of’n course!

First of all, their house is awexome. It has several different yards that are mostly immaculate. There are a whole bunch of berries and tomatoes and goods like that. There’s also a small apple orchard (maybe a dozen trees). We tried first to pick berries, but there was only a very small yeild (the blueberries yielded the most).

So then it was straight on to the cider-making. An huge wheelbarrow of apples was near a confabulous fraptraption. Here’s how the process worked:

Apples from the wheelbarrow were washed in one bucket and then rinsed in another bucket. From the rinsing bucket they went in a small, open-bottom buckety thing at the top of the fraptraption. Inside the buckety thing, blocking the bottom hole, was a thick dowel with several small, blunt metal blades set into it. This dowel was attached to a wheel on the outside of the fraptraption. Turn the wheel, and the bladed dowel starts grinding/mashing up the apples. The mashed up apples and their juices are now small enough to slip through the open bottom of the buckety thing and into a larger, slatted bucket below that is lined with a mesh bag.

Once the slatted bucket is full of mashed-up apple bits, the top of the mesh bag is gathered and then a lid is put down inside of the bucket. An enormous screw is then turned (by hand of course), which pushes down on the lid and compresses all of the apple bits, squeezing out their sumptuous juices, which collect in the wooden tray in which the slatted bucket sits. There’s a small hole on one end of the tray, and through this hole the apple cider spurts into whatever container you put beneath it.

This made gallons and gallons of apple cider. No additives, no preservatives, nothing but mashed-up apple juice.

Oh, and also the leftover apple parts (after all the juices were squeezed out of them) were thrown on a pile in the yard behind the backyard. This place was pretty big.

For a late lunch slash early dinner, chicken was barbequed according to an Alton Brown recipe. There was also home-made potato salad, bow-tie pasta salad with parmesan and olives, salad, corn on the cob, and hot dogs. There was also something for dessert, but we were all much too stuffed to partake by then.

So we grabbed our jugs of cider (as well as a couple of bottles of hard cider that we were given), said good-bye to Laura’s family and drove back to T-town.

Later in the evening I was picked up by Sandy & Mathias and driven to Fools Play, where I performed in a show called “Fools Play Improv” or something. Afterwards we all went out to the Rib Eye as usual, and then Sandy & Mathias drove me home (well, Sandy was the one actually driving).

But before they drove me home, we all drove Amber home. She lives in a trailer out in the woods. It was really cool, and it totally reminded Sandy of where she grew up.

Then they drove me home. I’d left my keys in the house, so I had to call Carrie and have her get out of bed and open the front door for me. Whooops!